William A. Oliver

William Albert Oliver Jr. (born 1926 in Columbus (Ohio) ; † October 8, 2005 in Rockford (Illinois) ) was an American paleontologist and geologist.

Oliver's father was a professor of civil engineering and grew up in Champaign, Illinois . He studied geology at the University of Illinois with a bachelor's degree in 1949 and at Cornell University with a master's degree in 1950 and a doctorate in 1952 (with a dissertation on the Devonian Onondaga limestone in New York). In 1952 he became an instructor and then an assistant professor at Brown University and from 1957 he was with the US Geological Survey , where he stayed until his retirement in 1993. From 1967 he was a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Institution in the Department of Paleobiology.

Oliver dealt with Devonian stratigraphy, especially in New York, and was an expert on fossil corals.

From 1964 to 1969 he was co-editor of the Journal of Paleontology. In 1975 he was President of the Paleontological Society . From 1983 to 1988 he was President of the International Association for the Study of Fossil Cnidaria and Porifera, and from 1976 to 1980 he was editor of Fossil Cnidaria with James Sorauf.

From 1984 to 1989 he was Secretary General of the International Palaeontological Association and from 1984 to 1989 President of the Subcommission on Devonian Stratigraphy of the International Stratigraphic Commission. In 1994 he received the Gilbert Harris Award from the Paleontological Research Institution.

He died in a traffic accident while crossing the street in the dark.

literature

• James Sorauf, Jerzy Fedorowski: William A. Oliver Jr. (1926-2005), Palaeoworld, Volume 19, 2010, pp. 340-347, online